


Flashlight

by iluvaqt



Series: Avengers ABCs [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Drug Abuse, F/M, Past Drug Addiction, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 12:38:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4607091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iluvaqt/pseuds/iluvaqt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He has nightmares, the more he remembers the more he sees how broken he is. But he has a light in the darkness and she'll never leave him to struggle alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flashlight

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you Purple_Moon123 for the edit and also for giving me the confidence boost to post this.

He didn't know where he was. He didn't even know who he was. His memory was foggy, but he knew he was a fighter, his body felt tight and he itched to move. Why couldn't he remember? The only thing he knew for sure was that his shoulder was burning. Frost burn worse than any cold than he'd ever felt raced up his shoulder blade and neck. His nerve endings were on fire but for some reason he couldn't move. It was then that he realized it was dark and it wasn't because the lights were out. He couldn't open his eyes.

Open

Open 

Open, damn it.

It was another minute of screaming the command in his own head that his eyelids obeyed.

"Ah my pet is awake," a heavily accented, sinister voice cooed.

His chest tightened and if his body weren't under some kind of trauma that forced all his responses to be delayed he swore to himself he would have shuddered at her voice. He didn't know why but she felt familiar and he knew it wasn't with warm and fuzzies. She entered his line of sight and he caught a flash of disfigurement to one side of her face before her hair settled over it, covering it from view. It looked like bad chemical burns.

"How is your arm?" She nodded at his left side and he turned to where she indicated.

It was then that he noticed the metal appendage, where his left arm had once been. He didn't remember his name but he knew without a shadow of a doubt that he had had a human arm before. Hysteria bubbling up inside him, he involuntarily moved those metal fingers. His mouth opened to scream but no sound come out. Tears welled in his eyes.

The woman with greenish black hair, caressed the side of his face. "Oh my pet, do you feel pain?" She wiped the tear away before it could slide into his hair. "We didn't get along you and I, the first time we met. You were very disagreeable. But you need me now. You are in a lot of pain. I am your pain's mistress. I can make it all go away. Do you want me to do that for you? Do you want the pain to end, little one?"

He didn't know what he was agreeing to then. He wouldn't know for many years. In that moment she took his pain, he became her slave. He was a slave to her drugs and she was his mistress. 

He nodded, tears from his phantom limb and his artificial arm overlapping, pain in his shoulder twisting the muscles and tendons in his neck. He just wanted it to stop. He wanted to wake up somewhere warm and safe and have this only be a nightmare. Something he could wake up from.

The sharp needled slipped through his skin and a cool liquid surged through his veins. He felt it the second it hit his brain. Everything exploded in brightness and warmth and as promised there was no pain. 

"Rest for now. We will let this take effect and then we will begin."

What followed was a cycle of bliss and withdrawal, the likes of which left him cramping and violently sick, crying and begging like a dog for her the help him. She earned her title as Mistress of Pain. She knew how to give him paradise but she also knew how to snatch it away. For months she added different twists to their game, sometimes no food would accompany the dose of drugs leaving him even more weak once the withdrawal hit. She always brought him to the same place when she was displeased with whatever progress she hoped to have from him.

It was a small cell with no windows and a single titanium door. There was a bucket for waste and a dirty thin mattress on the floor. He wouldn't know if it was day or night or how long he was there. Only that it was always cold and no one would hear his screams. The memory of how his head felt like it was splitting in two, how he'd nearly clawed his own stomach open to stop the pain and needed his tongue stitched up after almost biting it off, him jackknifing in his bed.

It was the fourth time this week that he’d woken up in a cold sweat. And even as he forced himself to slow his breathing which would in turn calm his racing heartbeat, he couldn't fight off the lingering chill. He always showered before going to bed of a night to warm himself up. His mechanical arm leached body heat but if he wore layers he couldn’t fall asleep. He was used to, no indoctrinated to, calm his mind and rest while only dressed in pants. His chest and arms were always bare. It was so that they could attach their electrodes and inject him with easy access his mind unhelpfully, snidely supplied.

He sucked in a long breath and let it out slowly, still trying to get his heart rate to return to normal. Since he’d started therapy with Charles Xavier, he was remembering more of his past. His childhood, his youth before the war, befriending Steve in Hell’s Kitchen. Deciding to enlist and training together at Goldie’s Boxing Gym in preparation for the physical. Yet along with the good memories came the bad. The years he had been awake and under HYDRA control. Their torture and manipulations, both physical and psychological. The things they’d commissioned him to do, and he’d done without question or remorse, like an obedient mindless assassin.

Some days, when he was feeling particularly low, when his guilt and self loathing weighed heavily, he wished he was back there. She always took away everything but the bliss her injected cocktail constructed in his mind. 

HYDRAs targets were globally-spread and diverse in their scope of political stance and economic position. His handlers changed as time ticked on. Alexander Pierce had been the last of a long line of men whose orders he had taken. She was his only constant, and he often felt a warring within his mind when he thought about her. He felt this attachment to her, a strange and frightening longing.

A warm, gentle touch on his shoulder, made him tense. Her sure hand didn’t waver even as his muscles protested being touched. 

Her fingers were gentle, but he knew those fingers were strong, skilled and could be deadly. Her body, like his, had been molded to be an instrument of death.

But strangely, he’d always felt safe in her arms. 

One woman offered a false haven. Her comfort fleeting and addicting. He had relief from his pains and guilt, and there was light and warmth but it dissipated all too quickly and left him more empty and battered than before. Her hair was dark and in the artificial lights it often shone an oily green. Her lips were black and always twisted up in a half sneer, her words ringing with mocking tone. She never touched his skin with her bare fingers. Her hands always covered to the wrists by her leather gloves as though he was dirty, or contaminated. Or unworthy to feel her touch.

This woman was very different. The woman holding him, the curves of her body pressed against his naked back giving him her warmth freely, had no such reserve. She offered herself to him. He had tasted her lips, he had free reign to explore every dip, plain and curve of her perfect body. Her soft hair shone in the daylight, different natural highlights catching the sun and making it seem alive. A living flame. In the moonlight, her fire was muted but no less beautiful. It was though it attracted even the smallest glimmers of light, the untamable aura that it illuded and seemed to emanate from within unable to ever be fully extinguished. Her full lush mouth whispered words against his skin, never lies or empty promises. And at unpredictable moments her whip-fast inappropriate wit would make him smile no matter his mood.

“I don’t pretend to know what you’ve been through. I’ve never been a human popsicle. Steve might be able to relate there. James, just know I’m here. No judgement. You can talk to me. I always listen.”

He put his human hand over her hand that was pressed against the center of his chest right over where his heart was now beating faster for an altogether different reason. He linked their fingers and brought her hand to his lips. He kissed her skin, it was warm.

His ghosts might never let him go. There was too much pain and death in his past. But he had people who loved him. He had her. She was unexpected. She was by no means an innocent. She had her own share of demons to conquer but she never let it show on the outside. In the dark they stood together, he knew she was there. That the release from the world he felt in her embrace wasn’t fleeting. That the acceptance and peace she gave him was genuine and enduring. 

They weren’t untainted. Their innocence had been stolen long ago. They were broken but still fighting. In the darkest moments, she never let him struggle alone. She always knew when he needed her. And she didn’t mind that he seemed to always turn to her when he was at his worst. 

“Do I wish you’d need me more than you do, bet your ass, yes. But you’re here now. That you trust me to carry you through whatever it is you’re going through will always be enough. I never thought I’d ever be someone’s light in the darkness. I didn’t know I had anything left in me.”

“You’re my flashlight,” he quipped with a small smile.

She snickered as she kissed the back of his neck. “я люблю тебя” (I love you)

“тоже люблю тебя, Катя,” he said without pause. (love you too, katya)

He turned in her arms and captured her full pouty lips with his. It didn’t matter how the world saw her. In his mind she was pure, she was his new haven and guiding light. And he could always get lost in her kiss and right now he needed her more than air.


End file.
